Altar Offerings

Ofrendas del Altar

The community altar was for everyone—all our dead, all our grief, combined.

"Can I put my mother here?" she asked, holding a framed photograph.

"That's the whole point." I moved aside my grandmother's picture to make room. "Who was she?"

"The strongest woman I ever knew. Until she wasn't."

Her name was Carolina, and she'd just moved to the neighborhood. Her mother had died six months ago; the grief was still raw on her face.

"Is it strange?" she asked. "Celebrating death?"

"We're not celebrating death. We're celebrating memory." I lit a candle. "The dead aren't gone if we remember them."

"Do you believe that?"

"I believe they visit. One night a year. Through the marigolds and the smoke."

We built the altar together—layering marigolds and cempasúchil, arranging photos of ancestors, laying out the foods our dead had loved.

"My mother loved champurrado," she said, placing a cup.

"My grandmother loved tamales." I added a plate. "I think they would have been friends."

"You think they'll meet? Tonight?"

"I hope so. Neither of them should be alone."

We stayed up all night, sitting vigil before the altar. The candles flickered. The incense burned. And Carolina slowly told me everything.

Her mother's diagnosis. The rapid decline. The last days she couldn't bring herself to describe.

"I wasn't ready," she said. "I thought I had more time."

"We always think that." I took her hand. "Until we don't."

I told her about my grandmother. The woman who raised me when my parents couldn't. Who taught me every tradition, every recipe, every prayer.

"She's why I do this," I said. "The altar, the marigolds. She made me promise to keep the old ways."

"You kept your promise."

"I try. It's harder alone."

"You're not alone tonight."

Dawn came slowly, golden light replacing candlelight. The spirits returned wherever spirits go.

"Thank you," Carolina said. "For letting me be here."

"Thank you for staying."

"Next year... can I come again?"

"Every year. As long as you want."

She came the next year. And the next. Each time, we added more to the altar—her father, my aunt, the slow accumulation of loss that defines a life.

"We have a lot of dead," she observed.

"That means we have a lot of love. The dead are just love we can't hold anymore."

"That's beautiful."

"It's true."

I kissed her in the third year, surrounded by candles and photographs and the smell of copal.

"Is this wrong?" she asked. "In front of them?"

"They wanted us happy. This is happy."

"Your grandmother approves?"

"She told me to find love. I think she meant you."

We married beside our altar, with all our dead as witnesses. The marigolds were brighter that year, the candles burned longer.

"They're celebrating," my aunt—still alive—declared.

"You believe in that?"

"I believe in love. And love transcends everything."

Altar offerings—where grief becomes gratitude, and love is the best way to honor our dead.